Archive for Tom Edwards

Snapchat is deliberately distancing itself from the social platforms that have come before it. With a shift from a creation to consumption model, the roadmap on how best to leverage Snapchat is clear.

Here are eight truths that marketers need to understand about how Snapchat views itself — and the ideal approach to maximizing the value of the platform.
1 - Snapchat is Not a Social Network. The Snapchat team has made it clear that it does not consider itself a social network. Instead, Snapchat is positioning itself as an ephemeral communication and consumption platform. This is a key point to consider when defining an approach to maximizing the platform.
2 - Attentive Audience. Snapchat boasts 50 million users in the US with a primary demographic of 14-28 years old. The average user frequents the app 14-22 times per day. It’s clear that Snapchat considers its platform as the “new TV” for this demo. From an attention and eyeballs perspective, driving views with this demographic is a key benefit of the platform.
3 - Consumption vs. Creation. Initially, Snapchat was a 1:1 content creation platform. Snapchat viewed the native phone camera as a competitor. With the recent shift with the Our Story offering and... Read more

Two of my passions are gaming and marketing. Whenever I have the opportunity for the two to intersect I am overjoyed. Previously, I have written on the topic of advergaming (imedia) and brand integrations (IEG). This article will highlight case studies of advergaming as well as introduce edutainment case studies.
Gaming is big business. According to Gartner, the projected worldwide video game market size in 2014 will surpass $100 billion dollars. In 2014, 58% of Americans have played a video game and 68% of gamers are 18 or older. With the fragmentation and shifts in media consumption, gaming provides significant dwell times with a hyper connected audience. Brands that create authentic and relevant value that empowers gamers will “unlock” value beyond impressions.
Let’s start with terminology refresher. An Advergame is an electronic game - often low-cost or free - designed to promote a brand or product.

ADVERGAMING - Advergaming is closely associated with both above the line, through the line and below the line integration where the advertisements or brand integrations are either explicit and may be an integral part of the game or products are embedded seamlessly into the existing gameplay.
ABOVE THE LINE EXAMPLES

A lot of industry attention has been directed at the recent Facebook shift to reach and frequency and the relevance of engagement on social platforms. The key areas of emphasis from Facebook is so much content is being generated that it is not possible to consume 15,000 potential stories so Facebook's edge rank algorithm allows for ~300 to show in the news feed. The impact for brands was to rethink their owned & paid strategy approach on the platform.
The shift impacted the ability for brands to create reach through engagement on Facebook which had been a viable strategy. There are still ways for brands to maximize organic content distribution and create reach through engagement socially. I have written previously on the benefits of Tumblr for organic content distribution and extending the shelf life of content. Today, I am focusing on the potential to create reach through engagement with Instagram but with a caveat that this may only be for a limited amount of time.
Recently, Forrester studied more than 3 million user interactions with more than 2,500 brand posts on seven social networks. The key takeaway was the fact that Instagram blew the other platforms away when it came to organic... Read more

Instagram recently announced they are taking major steps to enable brands by providing greater insight into the performance of both organic and paid content. These tools are a welcome addition to the highly visual platform and will create tighter alignment with business goals as it pertains to tracking impressions, reach and engagement.

The tools are built around three primary areas of account insights, ad insights and ad staging.
Account Insights - Account insights is the primary dashboard for mapping performance and engagement of organic content. This includes insights around the weekly performance of content, aggregate impressions over time as well as additional insight into the brands audience.
Here is a screenshot from the Instagram Blog highlighting account insights

Ad Insights - Ad Insights is the campaign performance hub for Instagram paid media that houses brand analytics (impressions, reach and frequency). Instagram, similar to parent company Facebook, are heavily focused on reach and frequency vs. engagement as a primary value proposition for brands. The Ad Insights dashboard is a quick and easy reference against the current campaign goals and all of the data can easily be exported for additional client reporting.

Ad Staging - One of the more exciting tools, especially for Social Agencies that partner... Read more

One item from SXSW 2014 that has remained relevant for me is a simple package of Post-it notes. These are not just any Post-it's, they are digitally enabled Post-it's that integrate seamlessly with Evernote. The simple utility of the integration that allows users to convert physical post-it notes into digital, searchable records inspired me to contact the Evernote team for a briefing to bettter understand how they partner with brands.

During the course of the briefing we touched on many topics such as their current user base of 100M+ as well as their approach to partnerships and how they are working with various device carriers at the OEM level to ensure Evernote is ever present on the latest devices. We also discussed their focus on physical accessories and partnerships with Moleskin & 3M.

Evernote's approach to creating value is to seamlessly become a part of a users daily routine. An interesting perspective about their user base was tied to the fact that out of 1000 people 999 will use Evernote in a different way. Users leverage Evernote as a way to capture anything important to their life, reuse it or stem off of it. From a brand partnership perspective, the goal is... Read more